Europe Part 2: Italy

We hopped a train in Monaco for Italy's Cinque Terre!

It was pretty amazing to see an instant difference in the way things looked and felt the moment our train crossed into Italy.

This was the first time either of us had ridden a train with compartments like the Hogwarts Express.  Could we avoid nerding out and doing Harry Potter poses?  Absolutely not!

Expelliarmus!

Expecto Patronum!

Nerds!

We switched trains a couple of times on our way to Cinque Terre, one stop happened to be in Christopher Columbus' hometown of Genoa... on Columbus day!  Oddly enough, the Italians in Genoa don't celebrate Columbus day.  Oh well, they put a huge statue of ol' Christoforo outside the train station.  Fair enough. 

The facade on the train statin was REALLY cool.  Wish we could have seen more of Genoa during the day.  I guess we'll just have to come back another time.

We arrived in Vernazza at about 10pm... right after all of the restaurants in town closed. :(

We decided to make our way to the apartment we rented (from a nice lady named Elisabetta who we never actually saw in person... more on this later) before undertaking the task of foraging for dinner.  After getting lost a few times, we asked for directions at a little 'convenience store'.   We soon discovered how truly awesome the towns in the Cinque Terre are.  The streets of Vernazza pretty much all turn into flights of winding stairs built into the hillside.

The stairs just keep going and going... we climbed for what seemed like forever until we got to our little place.  We were pretty surprised to see a sticky note with our name on it and the keys right in the door.

The surprises kept coming, Elizabetta trusted us enough to just leave a note asking for cash.  Seriously, we never saw her.  We just left the cash and keys on the table when we left the next day and hoped for the best!  As we never heard anything back from Elisabetta, we assume our little transaction worked out just fine.  I love that there are still places in the world where people can trust each other.

As our apartment had a 1/2 kitchen, we decided to make a meal out of whatever we could find in the little shop where we got directions to our place.  Isn't it adorable?

We ended up with some yummy lemon/olive oil cookie things, toasted bread medallions, some jarred bruschetta, jarred pesto, and this old school style pasta roll.  Thank goodness Scott was smart and packed his little Swiss Army knife!

After we found out the stove didn't work we noticed an electric water boiler on the counter.  This was probably the most improvised dinner either of us have ever made.  It was actually really fun to put together and kind of felt like some sort of Food Network Challenge.

Our little meal started to look pretty tasty.

Cheers!  

Notice that one of the walls of the apartment is the actual mountainside!  How cool is that!?!

Sadly, our tasty looking dinner was kinda nasty.

Actually, it was really nasty.  The cookies, ancient pasta stuff, and toasted bread tasted alright, but the jarred bruschetta and pesto were not good at all.  I feel bad for the tourists who buy things like that and haul them all the way home, only to find out they would have been better off buying their local store brand of sauce.  The sauces tasted like they had been on the shelf for a while, so maybe they were expired?  I still can't figure out how we had a bad meal in Italy.  Oh well. We'll chalk it up to a great cooking adventure.

How about our awesome, "this dinner is a huge disappointment" faces?  Fabulous.

  Fortunately, we only had 2 bad meals on our entire trip... this one, and another in Germany... sauerbraten LIVER in a cream sauce.  WHAT!?!  That's right, we ate pickled liver in cream sauce.  Alright, in our defense, neither of us speak German so we just ordered off of the pictures on the menu.  We thought we were just getting regular beef sauerbraten.  However, we were unpleasantly surprised to find out we chose stinking sour liver.  Note: We are FOR SURE learning German before we return to any German speaking countries.  We're all for adventurous eating, but it's nice to know what you're ordering.

Moving on... we cleaned up after dinner and went straight to bed.  We were EXHAUSTED!  

The next morning we woke up to the sound of heavy rain.  Good thing we came equipped!  I just wanted to lay in bed all morning.

The below picture is pretty typical of us on vacation:  Scott = wide awake bright and early.  Katie = Just 5 more minutes.  I'm still sleepy!

Thank goodness it only rained for about 20 minutes that morning (unfortunately we would see lots more rain later that day... and later in our trip)

After a quick shower and a few lemon cookies we stepped outside where we were able to get a better look at the neighborhood and Elisabetta's fantastic nicknacks.  LOVE the gnome.

We couldn't get over the cool stair streets.

Check out the charming buildings and cobblestone street running down the middle of the town.

We walked around a bit noticed none of the restaurants in town were serving breakfast yet, so we decided to check out the harbor.  Due to the storm, the sea near the Cinque Terre was slightly less friendly for swimming than the sea near Nice and Monaco.  We decided to leave our swim trunks in our packs.  I bet this little area is great for hanging out and swimming on a good day.  I guess we'll just have to come back another time!

We saw little boats just like these in the harbor of each of the Cinque Terre towns we visited.  Adorable! Obviously it wasn't a very good day to take a boat this small out in the stormy sea.

Don't you just want to move here?  We totally fell in love with Vernazza.

We grabbed a quick breakfast and made our way to the walking trail towards Corniglia... just as it started to rain again!  We turned around and caught the next train out of Vernazza with about a bazillion other tourists who didn't want to walk in the rain.  Check out how well prepared Scott looks!

As the storm picked up steam, we decided to buy some flimsy little umbrellas from a couple of entrepreneurial young men at the bottom of the stairs into town.  It's amazing... a few raindrops fall, umbrella salesmen appear out of nowhere!  The sky clears up, the salesmen disappear as quickly as they appeared.  I bet they rake it in on a day like that.  It rained off and on the whole time we were there.

We climbed the 382 stairs to Corniglia.  Great workout!

Scott looked so adorable with his rain gear and umbrella.

Near the top of the stairs we found the Church of San Pietro (built in 1334).  Check out the amazing doors and detailed stonework in the courtyard.  Pretty incredible that it's still in good shape after over 700 years.

LOVE the tiny winding streets. 

It finally stopped raining!  And, we found our way to a great lookout over the sea.  

Gorgeous views, beautiful blue sky, handsome traveling companion.  What more could I ask for?

In this shot you can see some of the terraced gardens in the hillside.  I don't know if it's true, but we heard the hillside gardens of Cinque Terre have the same amount of stonework as the Great Wall of China.  Right on.

We watched an episode of Rick Steves' Europe before we left where Rick and some Italian guy ate the fruit of a cactus like this.  It looked pretty tasty.  However, as this particular plant was growing out of the side of a cliff, we decided to take Rick's word for it.

Instead, we opted for some delicious gelato. 

We realized we were going to run out of time and had to eat our treats on the go (not he first or last time we did this on our European adventure).

We caught a train to the next town: Manarola.

Where we found more great boats...

And another great cityscape set into the hillside.

It was hard to believe that we were in a downpour only an hour before we took this beautiful, blue sky photo.

I wanted to get close to the water and ended up getting a little too close.  Good thing we had a long train ride to Austria with enough time for my shoes to dry out.

If you ever go to Manarola, you HAVE TO find this little place called la Pizzeria La Cambusa on the main thoroughfare.  

They serve a dish called 'Farinata Genovese', made of chick pea flower, olive oil, and lemon juice.  IT's super inexpensive and super yummy.  2000 years ago, Roman soldiers used to cook this dish on the go, using their shields to generate heat from the reflected sun.

Then you have to try the Trattoria Locanda Il Porticciolo.  We saw it was recommended by travel guru Rick Steves and had to try it...

Best.... Pizza.... Ever.

Ever.

We had gorgeous weather for the last portion of the trail, the "Via Dell'Amore" (Lover's Walk) that leads to the town of Riomaggiore.

All along the trail people have left their luggage locks attached wherever they could find a place to put them.

Part of the trail goes through a tunnel with walls COVERED in love notes and graffiti.  Amongst the writing we saw this cool little plaque commemorating the 40th anniversary of Abbey Road.  I thought that was a little strange until I saw what was on the plaque...

Some of the greatest lyrics EVER:

And in the end

the love you take

is equal to the love you make.

Fitting for the Via dell'Amore!

We decided to find a small spot to make our own mark.

Not too shabby..

People have even covered the 'love bench' with love notes.  Of course we had to stop for a smooch.

Gorgeous!

After a short hike we found ourselves in Riomaggiore.  

A little background:  We saw a photo like the one below on the wall of a friend's house right after we booked our flights to Europe.  We adjusted our itinerary to include a visit to see this place in person.  We didn't regret that decision one bit.

Look at this place!  Don't you want to book a flight for Italy tomorrow?!?

It was really fun to stand on the rocks, enjoying the view that inspired us to come to Cinque Terre.

I totally fell in love with all of the little boats

We wished we could have spent more time exploring the streets of Riomaggiore, but we had another train to catch.  We booked a night train to get us from Florence to Salzburg, Austria.  Our shoes were pretty wet from a day in the rain, so we took every opportunity to dry out.

We saw this awesome sign at one of the train stations and absolutely had to get a picture.  I loved that each country has it's own spin on the MickyD's menu.  We never actually ate McDonald's food in any of the countries we visited, but spent plenty of time taking advantage of their free wi-fi.

Our train arrived in Florence 2 hours before our night train to Austria was scheduled to leave.  We looked at a map and realized the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore  AKA 'The Duomo"was only a few blocks from the station.  We verified our train schedule and ran as fast as we could to the Piazza del Duomo to see the masterpiece in person.  Seriously, we absolutely HAVE TO come back to Florence someday so we can see this place in the daytime.  This city is the home of SO many master architects and painters, I think I could easily spend weeks just exploring Florence.  Alas, we had another train to catch to another great city.

It's kind of hard to tell from this nighttime picture, but the detail work on the building is incredible!

These are the famous bronze doors of Battistero di San Giovanni (Baptistery of St. John).  Michaelangelo called them "the gates of paradise."

Incredible!

We grabbed some pizza and pastries to eat on our way to Austria and ran as fast as we could back to the train station.  Check out the tiny little table dealie in our sleeper compartment.  Fabulous.  Also, check out my GPS watch.  This is the last picture of it.  Unfortunately, in a sleepy stupor and hurry to get off the train on time the next morning, I left the watch sitting where I thought I wouldn't forget it.  Sad :(  Note:  Scott surprised me at Christmas with a replacement :)  I was over the moon excited as I was super attached to that watch.

Check out Scotty chilling out on the bottom bunk.  We actually slept better than we thought we would in our tiny cabin.  We definitely plan on doing a night train again someday (but next time I will make sure not to leave anything behind).

Our cabin's tiny bathroom had a really cool tiny shower.  It was pretty fun to balance in the shower as the train was moving.

We cleaned up, set our shoes out to dry, and went straight to bed.  

The next morning we woke up in Austria and started our adventures in the German speaking countries.  Up next: Part 3: Austria!  Part 4:  Germany!  And Part 5: Switzerland!